The recap
Modern medicine is superb at fighting disease and remarkably poor at helping people once the fight can no longer be won. Atul Gawande, a surgeon and writer, examines that gap with unusual candour, including about the habits of his own profession. He looks at how ageing changes the body, at nursing homes that keep residents safe yet strip them of privacy and choice, and at the reformers who designed assisted living and other alternatives around what older people actually want. He then turns to terminal illness, contrasting aggressive treatment that buys little time at great cost with hospice care and honest conversations about priorities, fears and acceptable trade-offs. The stories of patients, including his wife's grandmother and finally his own father, give the argument its weight: the goal of care should be a good life to the very end, not merely a longer one. The healthcare details are mostly American, but the questions, and the practical advice on how to ask them, apply anywhere.
Why read it
For anyone caring for an ageing parent, facing hard medical choices, or simply wanting to think clearly and kindly about how they would like their own life to end.
Fun facts
- 01
It entered the New York Times bestseller list at number three and went on to reach number one.
- 02
By October 2015 it had spent 53 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
- 03
PBS's Frontline made a companion documentary, also called Being Mortal, which aired in February 2015 and follows Gawande as he explores how doctors talk with dying patients.
- 04
The book closes with the death of Gawande's father, also a surgeon, whose ashes the family scattered in the Ganges.
